The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people. --Cornel West, author and philosopher (b.1953)

(185:5.8-13) Pilate indicated to those assembled before him that he wished to read the communication which he had just received before he proceeded further with the matter before him. When Pilate opened this letter from his wife, he read: "I pray you have nothing to do with this innocent and just man whom they call Jesus. I have suffered many things in a dream this night because of him." This note from Claudia not only greatly upset Pilate and thereby delayed the adjudication of this matter, but it unfortunately also provided considerable time in which the Jewish rulers freely circulated among the crowd and urged the people to call for the release of Barabbas and to clamor for the crucifixion of Jesus.
Finally, Pilate addressed himself once more to the solution of the problem which confronted him, by asking the mixed assembly of Jewish rulers and the pardon-seeking crowd, "What shall I do with him who is called the king of the Jews?" And they all shouted with one accord, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" The unanimity of this demand from the mixed multitude startled and alarmed Pilate, the unjust and fear-ridden judge.
Then once more Pilate said: "Why would you crucify this man? What evil has he done? Who will come forward to testify against him?" But when they heard Pilate speak in defense of Jesus, they only cried out all the more, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
Then again Pilate appealed to them regarding the release of the Passover prisoner, saying: "Once more I ask you, which of these prisoners shall I release to you at this, your Passover time?" And again the crowd shouted, "Give us Barabbas!"
Then said Pilate: "If I release the murderer, Barabbas, what shall I do with Jesus?" And once more the multitude shouted in unison, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
Pilate was terrorized by the insistent clamor of the mob, acting under the direct leadership of the chief priests and the councilors of the Sanhedrin; nevertheless, he decided upon at least one more attempt to appease the crowd and save Jesus.

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. West is an outspoken voice in American leftist politics, and as such has been critical of many center-left figures, including President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. He has held professorships at Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Union Theological Seminary, and the University of Paris during his career. He is also a frequent commentator on politics and social issues in many media outlets.
From 2010 through 2013, West co-hosted a radio program with Tavis Smiley, called Smiley and West. He has also been featured in several documentaries, and made appearances in Hollywood films such as The MatrixReloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, providing commentary for both films. West has also made several spoken word and hip hop albums, and due to his work, has been named MTV's Artist of the Week. He has also been portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Kenan Thompson.
The son of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness." Styling himself as a radical democrat socialist, West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. These are the things you already know: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. --Robert Fulghum, author (b.1937)

(47:3.8) Almost the entire experience of mansion world number one pertains to deficiency ministry. Survivors arriving on this first of the detention spheres present so many and such varied defects of creature character and deficiencies of mortal experience that the major activities of the realm are occupied with the correction and cure of these manifold legacies of the life in the flesh on the material evolutionary worlds of time and space.

(47:5.3) The training of the first two mansion worlds is mostly of a deficiency nature—negative—in that it has to do with supplementing the experience of the life in the flesh.

(48:5.8) One of the purposes of the morontia career is to effect the permanent eradication from the mortal survivors of such animal vestigial traits as procrastination, equivocation, insincerity, problem avoidance, unfairness, and ease seeking. The mansonia life early teaches the young morontia pupils that postponement is in no sense avoidance. After the life in the flesh, time is no longer available as a technique of dodging situations or of circumventing disagreeable obligations.

Robert Lee Fulghum is an American author and Unitarian Universalist minister.
He grew up in Waco, Texas and received his Bachelor of Arts at Baylor University in 1958. He received his Bachelor of Divinity at Starr King School for the Ministry in 1961 and was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister. Rev. Fulghum served the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship in Bellingham, Washington from 1960–1964, the Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church in Shoreline, Washington from 1964 to 1968 and the Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Church in Edmonds, Washington where his is currently Minister Emeritus.
Rev. Fulghum came to prominence in the United States when his first collection of writings, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1988), stayed on the New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years. Throughout the collection, subtitled "Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things," Fulghum expounds his down-home philosophy of seeing the world through the eyes of a child.
There are currently more than 16 million copies of his books in print, published in 27 languages in 103 countries. His prose style is very simple and direct, and finds life-affirming maxims in such mundane matters as visiting zoos, leaf-raking, and dusting.

The true test of a civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops -- no, but the kind of man the country turns out. --Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist (1803-1882)

(81:6.37) Effective and wise leadership. In civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective load-pulling spirit. Ten men are of little more value than one in lifting a great load unless they lift together—all at the same moment. And such teamwork—social co-operation—is dependent on leadership. The cultural civilizations of the past and the present have been based upon the intelligent co-operation of the citizenry with wise and progressive leaders; and until man evolves to higher levels, civilization will continue to be dependent on wise and vigorous leadership.

(81:6.42) Leadership is vital to progress. Wisdom, insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations. Civilization is never really jeopardized until able leadership begins to vanish. And the quantity of such wise leadership has never exceeded one per cent of the population.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet" and "Experience". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul". Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."
He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. --Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter, Nobel laureate (b.1941)

(184:4.2-3) During this tragic hour of suffering and mock trials before the ignorant and unfeeling guards and servants, John Zebedee waited in lonely terror in an adjoining room. When these abuses first started, Jesus indicated to John, by a nod of his head, that he should retire. The Master well knew that, if he permitted his apostle to remain in the room to witness these indignities, John's resentment would be so aroused as to produce such an outbreak of protesting indignation as would probably result in his death.
Throughout this awful hour Jesus uttered no word. To this gentle and sensitive soul of humankind, joined in personality relationship with the God of all this universe, there was no more bitter portion of his cup of humiliation than this terrible hour at the mercy of these ignorant and cruel guards and servants, who had been stimulated to abuse him by the example of the members of this so-called Sanhedrist court.

(184:4.6) These are the moments of the Master's greatest victories in all his long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-flung universe. Having lived to the full a life of revealing God to man, Jesus is now engaged in making a new and unprecedented revelation of man to God. Jesus is now revealing to the worlds the final triumph over all fears of creature personality isolation. The Son of Man has finally achieved the realization of identity as the Son of God. Jesus does not hesitate to assert that he and the Father are one; and on the basis of the fact and truth of that supreme and supernal experience, he admonishes every kingdom believer to become one with him even as he and his Father are one. The living experience in the religion of Jesus thus becomes the sure and certain technique whereby the spiritually isolated and cosmically lonely mortals of earth are enabled to escape personality isolation, with all its consequences of fear and associated feelings of helplessness. In the fraternal realities of the kingdom of heaven the faith sons of God find final deliverance from the isolation of the self, both personal and planetary. The God-knowing believer increasingly experiences the ecstasy and grandeur of spiritual socialization on a universe scale—citizenship on high in association with the eternal realization of the divine destiny of perfection attainment.

Bob Dylan is an American songwriter, singer, painter, and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", which became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. Leaving behind his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone", recorded in 1965, enlarged the range of popular music.
Dylan's lyrics incorporate a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning more than 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his songwriting is considered his greatest contribution. Since 1994, Dylan has also published seven books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries.
As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

When I found out about four years ago that a total eclipse of the sun would occur on August 21st 2017, on the 2023rd birthday of our Lord and Master, it immediately occurred to me to have a Scientific Symposium conference over the weekend prior to the Monday eclipse. There has been a rich and popular tradition of having Urantia Book inspired talks about science beginning in the 1988, SSI in Tennessee. Oklahoma City took over the mantle and sponsored SSII and SSIII in 1989 and 1994. Berkeley Elliott spearheaded these conferences and because she would have been 100 years old on August 23, 2017, this makes this symposium special for the memory of her service.

Knowing that Susan Cook was well acquainted with how to organize a conference, I casually asked her for advice on how to create SSIV over this amazing weekend. She barely let me finish asking her for advice, before she interrupted me and immediately volunteered to be the Conference Chair. I was thrilled and knew that something really special was going to happen.

SSIV History

When you have four years to prepare for a Urantia conference, there are many things that can be dreamed of and problems to solve. Susan immediately went to work and secured a Methodist youth camp near Lawson Missouri which was nearly dead center in the path of the solar eclipse. We were thrilled and well on our way. Then in 2015, the Methodists decided to sell the camp and we were suddenly without a place to have our conference. Undeterred, Susan began looking around for new venues in the path of the eclipse. In the meantime, investors bought the camp at auction and placed it in the care of the current and past camp director, Bo Tucker, who then contacted Susan to see if we still wanted to have our conference there as promised by the Methodists. Susan of course said YES! with a thrill passed onto me that you can only imagine.

Buck Choquette, Robert Aponte, Tom Choquette, Susan Cook and I all showed up at the Wilderness Camping Retreat Center on Wednesday August 16 and began the construction of the venue that would turn out to be almost mortally paradisiacal. Huge crates of food were brought in and stored. The plenary area was prepared with seating for 100 and the sound and sight was perfected. Bedding arrangements were handled with care by Susan.

One thing that makes a Urantia conference so successful (and they all are) is the willingness of so many people to volunteer. When profits and payrolls are not included in the price of admission, volunteerism is the driver of success.

Margaret Thompson coordinated transportation to and from the airport with the inexhaustible help of Mike Wood who was in constant motion driving to and from KCI. Larry Harrison brought his 11 passenger bus to bring them in. These workhorses did amazing service in what they did. They never missed a soul.

Tom Choquette and Susan Cook ran multiple times to Costco for food supplies. Jeremy Allen also shopped with them some. Jake Thompson headed up a team of volunteers who worked their fingers to the bones quite joyfully and provided the participants with a most extraordinarily delicious meal plan for two and a half days. Jeremy Allen is a true Vegan Gourmand. Karen, Jeremy and Jake came in on Thursday and began the work of feeding more or less 50 hungry people the most tantalizing array of carne, vegetarian and vegan cuisines. No diet was left out, and the food was beyond good. It was morontial!

But it just wasn’t about the cooking and eating. Volunteers had to be recruited to do the hard unsung hero work of clean up. And clean up the volunteers did! Susan recruited volunteers to work, many times missing the plenary art and science presentations to perform the unheralded but necessary work of cleaning up. Karen Allen and Dan Casko were tireless and efficient at such a vital job. Evette was ubiquitous. Noah Wood and Steve Law were reliable. Margaret Thompson triple timed as transportation coordinator, cook and clean up artist. Shifts for clean up were well organized and efficient.

Steve Sawyer displayed his gorgeous art and Rick and Susan Lyon had their wares available which added to our financial stability and the material and spiritual joy of patrons.

Program

As Program Chair, I figured that I would be herding cats, but it was not so. The flow of the program was surprisingly lacking in technical difficulties (with a few minor exceptions.) With the inestimable help of Buck Choquette and Robert Aponte, we pieced together the mechanical and musical nuts and bolts to provide a media of success for all. I need to thank each of the science talk presenters and recognize their willingness to share their insights so selflessly:

One signature beauty of how this program would fulfill our souls with comfort and unity, was to have Artisans perform their art or music between each presentation or at least every 20-25 minutes. The mix of science and art verified the unity of God as consisting in all things. I recognize them now:

K Brendi Poppell (the first person I called to be a part of this conference)

Steve Sawyer

Robert Aponte

Christina Seaborn

Buck Choquette

Olga (never caught her last name)

Bill Graham

Bob Solone

What superlative can I use to indicate how beautiful this was? The balance separated but also unified the strong spirit of truth realization that, “Even now you should learn to water the garden of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowledge” (48:6.32)

We got both!!

There was a volunteer duty that I was not sure was going to fly, but fly it did. The Urantia Corps of Worship Conductors (UCWC) organized and provided worship in the morning and before meals. Bobbie Dreier lead the team unselfishly. There were even 6 people who got up at 4:00 am on Monday morning to celebrate noon in Israel which was the actual birthday time of Jesus’ birth.

Special recognition must go to Antonio Schefer who was involved with the planning of this conference from the beginning. He spread the word through social media quite efficiently and took on the task of video recording all the presentations. Hopefully the fruits of his video labor will come out soon and we can all enjoy the fruits of his unselfish labor.

Only one night were we able even partially to enjoy the night sky as the weather was not cooperative. Nevertheless, on Saturday night we enjoyed gazing with powerful telescopes at Andromeda, Sagittarius and other night sky notables. Dawn Grant gave us this instruction. She is employed by the Wilderness Camp and is an amateur astronomer.

Sunday Night Banquet

There were more people who showed up on Sunday to either spend the night or come in from distant hotels to enjoy our banquet and to be around for the eclipse on Monday. Our remembrance banquet was special as we hosted over 60 souls to eat a delicious rack of lamb or to enjoy Jeremy’s tasty and nutritious vegan meal.

Once we were through eating and the volunteer cleaning staff had about finished, we had a remembrance in the dining hall. Many touching remembrances were heard by all, reinforcing the presence of Jesus and inspiring us to carry out his great proclamation to carry this gospel into all the world.

We moved upstairs and began the plenary appreciation of the significance of Jesus” birth and bestowal. Bill Allen began with a lovely rendition of “Birthday Party of the King.” Steve Sawyer and Tom Choquette were the speakers, variously giving their interpretations of the Master’s life. Of course as she had many times throughout the days of the conference, Brendi Poppell delivered another of her wonderful remembrance poems about Jesus and his teachings. Bill Graham, Robert Aponte and Christina Seaborn backed Dan up. I sang a song entitled “Behold the Man.” The evening basically concluded with a concert with an encore by Bob Solone and Christina Seaborn playing several songs, but especially in my mind, “Here Comes the Sun.”

Eclipse

Weather was always in the back of my mind in hopes that we would have a beautiful clear day to bring in Jesus’ birthday with such a cosmic event. Usually, the temperature in August will hover around the upper 90’s and be clear. If you had told me four years ago that on August 21, 2017 that there would be three large thunderstorms on that day beginning at 8 am in the morning, I probably would have begun looking for another clear venue to see the eclipse. Chances of success would be very low.

But this was our fate. An early morning thunderstorm lasted until about 11:30 am. We all rushed out to the viewing field and set up our blankets and chairs. Mostly cloudy skies prevailed, but intermittently the sun would creep out of the cloudy shadows and show the face of a reluctant sun. By 11:45 am the partial eclipse was well underway. Periodically the sun would creep through the curtains of cloudy obstruction and thrill all of us with whoops of joy as we pressed our eclipse glasses to our eyes and viewed with rapt attention at the amazing event unfolding before our darkened eyes. Shouts of “Happy birthday Jesus!” and songs like “Please Don’t Take our Sunshine Away.” enveloped us all. When the sun periodically dipped behind the clouds our minds were in anxious anticipation and hopes that we would, again, be fortunate sons and daughters.

AND WE WERE!! Beginning at 1:08 pm on a warm August day, amidst the high humidity cushion between two huge storms, we gazed for two minutes and thirty eight seconds at the most amazing totality in awe inspiring rapture. Whoops and screams of joy abounded as if we had just won a championship football game in the last second, or hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning with 2 outs to win the game.

Once the diamond ring reappeared as totality finished its complete shadow and as we were cheering and hugging each other in rapt joy, a strange series of thundering booming occurred for several seconds making us all wonder what in the world it could be. Firecrackers? Thunder? Sonic booms? First, no firecrackers would have been allowed in the camp. Rule that out. Thunder and lightning storms were distant and well before and after the time of totality. Rule that out. Was a military or NASA jet on a scientific mission following the eclipse at sonic boom speeds? Possible, but local media would have been alerted to this, as faster than the speed of sound air travel is basically forbidden over the continental US. OR was the little known and poorly understood phenomenon known as “infrasound” responsible? I can’t explain it here, but here is a link to read about it:

This is a rare occurrence, and we all were privy not only to a visual optical experience but also to an auditory or hearing manifestation as well. Todd Scarborough is pursuing the science of this event and our group may have an opportunity to testify about the veracity of the phenomenon.

We hugged and kissed and said our goodbyes as we were forced to leave the field because of the next approaching thunderstorm. This one lasted all afternoon. Another huge storm arose that night causing major deadly flooding in parts of Kansas City.

I am scientifically minded, so I could never believe that the powers that be could have been responsible for allowing us to see totality. After all, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.” But we all were secretly hoping that the Master Force Organizers would grant us this birthday wish of clear skies for our Master’s birthday. If they did, we’ll hear about it on Mansonia.

SSIV Destiny

We presented the idea that SSV should happen along the eclipse line of 2024 when a total eclipse of the sun will occur extending from before Mexico to beyond Canada on April 8th 2024 which happens on a Monday, and is also the day before the resurrection of Jesus, “the time of the tomb.” What a great time to have a SSV before such a religiously significant event. Coincidentally, April 8th in the Western hemisphere is actually April 9th in Palestine which is the actual date of Jesus’ resurrection. This is a significant date for Urantia Book believers exclusively. Many are thinking of where our next SSV should be. Stay tuned.

Conclusion

A handful of believers spent the night on Monday night. A study group on the evening of Jesus’ birthday studied paper 196 on the Faith of Jesus. It was a great remembrance.

Would we have done things differently? The answer to this question is always yes, but when your expectations are exceeded a thousand fold, how can it be better? If you were not there and are reading this, I am sure you wish you were. The fellowship and socialization was divine, the venue was favorable, the scientific presentations were enlightening, the art was vivifying, the food was marvelous, the presence of Jesus was palpable, and of course the eclipse was spectacular.

Thank you is not even enough to say to everyone involved with making this a most successful conference. I am on my knees to the devotion and work put in by all the volunteers.

I know this is long, but I had to write it to document not only the great traditions of Scientific Symposium’s, but to hold on to the memories so vital to self satisfaction and attainment. As Rodan says:

(160:4.12) Train your memory to hold in sacred trust the strength-giving and worth-while episodes of life, which you can recall at will for your pleasure and edification. Thus build up for yourself and in yourself reserve galleries of beauty, goodness, and artistic grandeur. But the noblest of all memories are the treasured recollections of the great moments of a superb friendship. And all of these memory treasures radiate their most precious and exalting influences under the releasing touch of spiritual worship.

“the feeling of being upset or annoyed, especially because of inability to change or achieve something”
“the prevention of the progress, success, or fulfillment of something”

There is a quote that appears to be from an anonymous source that refers to “frustration” and I think it defines the way I feel better than anything that I can come up with myself, and it simply says “I can’t tell if it is killing me or making me stronger”.

In just a few months I will be in my 70th revolution around the sun, so I must presume that from the absence of the demise of my existence, by all accounts is quite healthy and strong.

In my pursuit to try to understand my frustration and to identify what it is that is frustrating me, and has been for the past 50 years I came across another word (in the UB, more on that later) that helped me come to some resolution, and that word is “curiosity”.

I returned from Southeast Asia when I was 20 years old and I can honestly state that is when my curiosity began and put me on the road that I am still on to this day.

Why the human race is so hell bent on trying to kill each other? The year I was there, 1968, saw 16,592 young men shipped home to their loved ones, the most of all the years in that conflict. Many time I could have been counted in that number of casualties. Many times I’ve ask myself why I wasn’t?

I ask a young Baptist Minister this question early on that was sent by a friend, and he said he would get back with me. Never saw him again!

I joined a 7th day Church, much like the 7th day Church that Dr. Sadler was involved in during his early years. We were quite familiar with Ellen White and her teachings. This sustained me for many years and I do not regret my involvement with them. I learned a great deal from the study of the Old and New Testament that I still value today. But in the end, they still could not answer my questions.

I read some of the Torah ,some of the Talmud, some of the Quran and others. Looked at what Carl Sagan, Emanual Velikovsky, Noam Chomsky, and many other great minds and what they had to say.

And then one day, quite by accident while talking to my older brother on the phone he asked if I’d had ever heard of a Dr. Sadler and the Urantia book? That was about 5 years ago. Well, I can state without a doubt, that is the day that changed my life! That started me on my “new” journey that answered every question that I’ve ever had and ones that I didn’t know to ask. It explained who Jesus was, his mission, and what “HIS” true Gospel (Good News) is. What is “HIS” true Gospel? The Truth!
182:1.9 I am the way, the truth, and the life.

This is the point where I have to ask myself a serious question, and I don’t know if I’m going to like what I find out, but I am more than willing to live with the answer.

Why did it take me so long to find the Truth? Why was the UB held back from me for so long? Was it waiting on something in me to grow? My education? I could have very easily been a part of the early UB group. Did they not want me there? To be honest, I am not the least bit disappointed to have missed those turbulent years! And there is no amount of argument that can convince me that the Revelators watching did so with anything less than disappointment! I am sure there are reasons and one day I’m again sure they will let me know.

I know that I ask the hard questions, of myself and of others. The world cannot hide or ignore the “Truth” much longer!

My curiosity and frustrations have taken me down many roads, and where I find myself now is quite alright with me. My commitment is made!

I know I started this post out on the word “frustration” but I’m going to end on the word “curiosity”.

14:5.11 Curiosity—the spirit of investigation, the urge of discovery, the drive of exploration—is a part of the inborn and divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given you merely to be frustrated and repressed. True, these ambitious urges must frequently be restrained during your short life on earth, disappointment must be often experienced, but they are to be fully realized and gloriously gratified during the long ages to come.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
--Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)

(1:2.7) The existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical deduction. God can be realized only in the realms of human experience; nevertheless, the true concept of the reality of God is reasonable to logic, plausible to philosophy, essential to religion, and indispensable to any hope of personality survival.

(101:1.1) Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable.

(103:7.1) Science is sustained by reason, religion by faith. Faith, though not predicated on reason, is reasonable; though independent of logic, it is nonetheless encouraged by sound logic.

Blaise Pascal 19 June was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method.
In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator.
Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health, especially after the age of 18, and he died just two months after his 39th birthday.

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
--Viktor Frankl, (1905 –1997)

(175:2.2) Many times has this unreasoning and un-Christlike hatred and persecution of modern Jews terminated in the suffering and death of some innocent and unoffending Jewish individual whose very ancestors, in the times of Jesus, heartily accepted his gospel and presently died unflinchingly for that truth which they so wholeheartedly believed. What a shudder of horror passes over the onlooking celestial beings as they behold the professed followers of Jesus indulge themselves in persecuting, harassing, and even murdering the later-day descendants of Peter, Philip, Matthew, and others of the Palestinian Jews who so gloriously yielded up their lives as the first martyrs of the gospel of the heavenly kingdom!

(99:4.6) During the psychologically unsettled times of the twentieth century, amid the economic upheavals, the moral crosscurrents, and the sociologic rip tides of the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era, thousands upon thousands of men and women have become humanly dislocated; they are anxious, restless, fearful, uncertain, and unsettled; as never before in the world's history they need the consolation and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos.

Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". His best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, meaning Nevertheless, Say "Yes" to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp) chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones, and thus, a reason to continue living. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.